June 2023 – Chan Wai Charles Wong

Heat and humidity conspired to wake me up at 3am, where lying on my sweat-soaked sheets as a thunderstorm lurked outside made me feel like I was lying on my bed not in Berlin but in Singapore. The maudlin meteorological conditions, coupled with the recent passing of the summer solstice, gave me a sudden urge to cocoon myself under my duvet with a book and some tea while music played softly in the backdrop and the room smelt faintly of burned sandalwood.

At Fete de la Musique, I was lucky to hear @lisaakuah perform songs from her debut album, Outgrowing Nymph. I met the psychedelic folk singer about 2 years ago at Space Meduza, where I was immediately entranced by her voice which seemed to expand endlessly into the neon-lit interior of the bar. Though Alex offered more of an industrial setting, the effect remained the same, her voice reverberating through bricks walls and steel beams to project an acoustic center into an abstract, cosmic space: “worlds endlessly wide,” as she would sing in “Dancing Trees.”

On a night where the past echoed into the present, and the wind outside stirred storms in my heart, I found Lisa’s music more penetrating than usual.

I’m close to the earth
I breathe in the world
Lying down on the ground
That’s how I came to see
In the breeze, the dancing trees
Lisa Akuah

Hay-on-Wye greeted me with the smell of manure which wafted intermittently into my psoriatic nostrils as the bus careened through the Welsh countryside, Gran Turismo style. I was here for the last day of Hay Festival, tantalisingly termed by Bill Clinton as “the Woodstock of the mind.” Dubitable quotation source aside, there’s really a lot to like about Hay, a literary festival that combines the alacrity of summer camps and the finesse of interior thought: sweaty bodies meet fluid minds. Alongside tents, food stalls and lounge chairs were NGOs set up in flea market format doing donation and subscription drives: among a few, Greenpeace, theWI, Macmillan Cancer Support, and ShelterBox. People were middle class cordial – progressive and aware but also privileged to some extent.
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At the Baillie Gifford Stage, Dua Lipa said that she has no plans to write a book, to the palpable dismay of the audience. But she is fully committed to her music (a new album), her podcast (“At Your Service”), and her book club (“Service95”). The interview, effortlessly and tactfully conducted by Gaby Wood (chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation), offered an intimate insight into Dua Lipa not as global popstar, but as avid reader. It chronologically looked at various chapters of her life – moving to Kosovo, moving back to London, nascent music ventures – through literature: Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. It is a prime example of how when one holds up a book, one sees a part of themselves reflected on the pages.
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After a satisfying keralan curry paired with a Welsh lager, I booked a 30-min massage with Jon (without the H, he insisted). Jon worked primarily on my lower back and noticed I had some issues with my shoulders. “Sitting all day in front of a screen is unnatural,” he admonished in a fatherly way. “So don’t forget to move.” With some vitality restored, I made my way back to the center of town.